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A weekend in Cardiff

Last weekend saw our continued involvement with the UK National Trampoline League which is certainly growing in popularity. This was qualifier 3 for the year and had attracted a whopping 850 competitors entries. Considering the first two had 300-350 competitors each you can see how it’s growing. With 4 beds running simultaneously and that volume of competitors I knew that covering the 2 days of competition myself would be nigh on impossible to suicidal on my health front. I have covered several events with 300-400 competitors and it’s bloody hard non stop work so our contingency plan was put into place.

We have now agreed terms for the whole 2016 season qualifiers and finals so this contingency plan simply had to work. Without a second shooter on that gantry, with the rate of the events growth, I would be seriously struggling to give justice to the series via the limited imagery of a single shooter. Also twin shooters at regional events gives us better coverage options if required.

The contingency plan was my son Joshua who had so far been Photoshop and processing guru at the desk (see earlier posts). He had shadowed me on several bookings and I had prepared for this occasion by having him hone his photographic skills at training sessions kindly opened up to us by local clubs so we were confident, even if he was a little nervous.

The purchase of a second Canon 70-200 f2.8 and several more 16gb CF cards was the final part to the jigsaw for him. Some training on Photoshop for my wife and we were ready to go.

The whole weekend was simply manic and almost uncontrolled chaos for us personally. On the Saturday we were still selling images 2 hours after the event had finished. Other than the queue we had the hall had been emptied and just the night security remained. They were brilliant though and escorted each and every customer out of the now secured arena.

We finally sat down to eat at 2145hrs, at the pub next to our hotel, and were sound asleep by 2245hrs thoroughly exhausted. The Sunday was a bit quieter on the shutter count but non the less exciting on the competition and business fronts.

Our total image count for the weekend just exceeded 9600 which is the largest single event we have covered to date. It took 2 of us 4 days to process the galleries for the 2 days. The largest gallery was Saturday with some 6525 images in total and Sundays with just over 3000 images. The figure for Sat’s gallery is just under “Home” and above the Facebook notice.

For anyone wanting to know the set up of these events here is a view from the upper balcony of the arena. You can clearly see the 4 panels (2 beds per panel), where the competitors are huddled and back to the spectators. I took this image during the first panels warm up shortly after the hall opened.

Finally an image of my lad with his new toy locked to the front of his gripped 5Diii. His hit rate was awesome with only 7 out of focus images in over 4000 taken. He’d studied the routines, as advised, and captured and excellent body of work which has been commented upon by several customers. Incidentally we destroyed a double set of fully charged LP-E6 batteries each, as expected, on Saturday. Recharged we managed Sunday on single twin sets each owing to the reduced competitors and shorter competition day.

So with 8 weeks until the finals in London we have a few weddings, a couple of regional gymnastics events and the first of a few awards evenings leading up to Xmas.